Promises to keep: Fighting crime on the East Side

Promises to keep: Fighting crime on the East Side

The mourners stretched down New Braunfels Avenue, many carrying homemade signs with the name of a 26-year-old mother scrawled in black marker.

The woman had been shot two nights earlier on Hays Street, about a block away. The group walked past the Hayes Food Mart, where someone else had been shot and wounded in the parking lot the previous week. They walked by Believers in Christ Ministries, a former pool hall that now serves the homeless men and women who pace up and down the street or linger on its curbs and corners.

“I done seen kids die, I done seen mothers cry. Man, enough is enough!” a man shouted over a bullhorn about Destiny Garcia, who left behind two children when she was killed Nov. 16. The man led the small crowd down the East Side street that is dotted today with a collection of small businesses, grassy, vacant lots, and empty storefronts, their windows boarded up like bandaged eyes.

Garcia was one of 42 people slain on the East Side last year, San Antonio’s deadliest in more than two decades. Almost a third of the city’s homicides took place in Council District 2, which includes the entire East Side, with 13 of them recorded in the neighborhood where Garcia died.

A few blocks from the killing scene, a very different one unfolds — a collection of new, modern apartments called East Meadows, the much-anticipated, mixed-income housing development that is the centerpiece of a multimillion-dollar effort to revitalize this part of the East Side.

City leaders, including Mayor Ivy Taylor, who lives in the neighborhood and represented District 2 for several years as a councilwoman, insist this long-overlooked neighborhood is on the cusp of change, thanks to large federal grants that over the last five years have made projects like East Meadows possible.

But the buildings also stand in stark contrast to the older, dilapidated homes that surround them, and the East Side’s persistent reputation as a haven for crime.

A $600,000 Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation grant awarded to the San Antonio Housing Authority in 2012 specifically addressed crime in a two-square-mile area bordered by New Braunfels Avenue and the AT&T Center. In that small radius, more than 50 percent of residents live below the poverty level, according to American Community Survey 2011-2015 estimates, a rate roughly three times higher than in Bexar County as a whole.

“There’s no hope,” said Hubert Brown, an outreach worker with Stand Up S.A., an on-the-ground, violence prevention program run by the city’s Metropolitan Health District that organized the rally for Garcia. “Like even if you try your best and people keep shutting the door in your face, eventually you give up, and they break you down.”

Today’s problems on the East Side are the “result of years of disinvestment,” said Mayor Taylor, and the fact that many residents here feel disconnected from opportunities that would allow them to access the mainstream economy.

The federal Byrne grant, which had never before been awarded to a housing authority, is one piece of a much larger, multi-pronged effort to revitalize the East Side. An examination of how officials spent the grant, which officially concludes this spring, underscores how difficult it can be to reduce crime in neighborhoods where so many negative economic and social circumstances are stacked against residents.

The grant was used to pay for a variety of programs aimed at combating the problems Taylor referenced that have long plagued the East Side, such as poverty and subpar education. Initiatives include a resource center for probationers, a community garden on New Braunfels Avenue that remains active, and a temporary police foot patrol program that put officers on the streets to better communicate with residents and business owners.

Officials said they are encouraged that an array of other measures under way in the neighborhood — paid for by more than $54 million in federal grants, plus millions in other city funding — will result in lasting changes for the East Side, from the East Meadows development, which replaced the notorious Wheatley Courts public housing complex, to an improved focus on safety around the schools.

Already, East Side neighborhoods immediately adjacent to the Byrne area and near downtown are experiencing a renaissance, as millennials and young professionals are moving into historic homes, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase and renovate them. New eateries have popped up, too, including a casual barbeque spot and a coffee shop.

Crime levels have dropped in some categories. From 2014 through 2016, non-violent crimes like burglaries, auto thefts and larcenies dropped by about a quarter in the Byrne area. Offenses such as loitering and drunkenness dropped slightly, and incidents of illegal drug activity fell by about 17 percent, though still double the overall rate in San Antonio.

Still, it’s a long road ahead.

Homicides, after holding mostly steady in 2014 and 2015, nearly tripled within the small, Byrne grant radius in 2016. Shootings went up 68 percent compared to 2014.

“We created this mess over decades of local and federal policy,” said Christine Drennon, a Trinity University sociology professor who helped write the Byrne grant implementation plan and has closely studied the East Side revitalization. “We have to pump significant resources into those places that were denied them for so long.”

For some, the resources have come too late.

Last November, Brown led the procession for Garcia. The crowd wound its way down St. Martin Avenue and then to Hays Street, where the woman was found dead, shot between her eyes. They stopped in front of a small shrine someone had erected in the grass.

“Destiny!” wailed Garcia’s mother, keening as the crowd stood around her and quieted. “My baby! It isn’t fair!”

Chapter 2 - ‘We in a war zone’

For months, Eddie Sullivan kept a bag of his son’s clothing in his car.

The bag came from police. The clothes were worn by his 22-year-old son Vontay Jamar Price the night he was killed, one of two men slain in January 2015 at an East Side car wash at New Braunfels and Gibbs, an area known for drug dealing and less than a half-mile from the barber shop and salon that Sullivan operates.

For a long time, Sullivan didn’t want to open the bag. He left it on the front passenger seat for awhile — father and son riding together.

Last summer, three men each pleaded guilty to two counts of murder in the case. Police and prosecutors said Jacquay Howard, Edwin Joseph and Adrian Perkins were known gang members who opened fire at the car wash hours after the city’s Martin Luther King Jr. march had ended. A judge sentenced Howard to 45 years, Perkins to 35 years and Joseph to 25 years — insufficient punishment, Sullivan believes.

Perhaps the surest test of the success of the Byrne and other federal grants pumping financial resources into in the neighborhood is whether the programs they’ve funded will result in better lives for the people who live and work on the East Side — people like Sullivan, who’ve lost a number of loved ones to violence, who’ve been incarcerated for serious crimes themselves, and who continue to experience or witness violence in their neighborhoods.

In parts of the East Side, the pipeline to prison is “systematic,” agreed Brown, with Stand Up S.A. “It’s a normal thing in our community.”

People don’t have the opportunity to succeed when they live in an environment like that, said Brown, who has been incarcerated and whose father and grandfather both spent time in prison.

“We in a war zone,” Brown said, a phrase uttered by many who live and work on the East Side.

Sullivan grew up in public housing projects in the neighborhood, coming of age in the 1990s, when San Antonio experienced its highest homicide rates. When he was 22, he was sentenced to nearly two decades in prison for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and cocaine possession.

Sullivan was imprisoned during an era notorious for street gangs that operated around the city, gangs like the East Terrace Gangsters, or the ETGs, the Rigsby Court Gangsters and the Bloods.

Price was a toddler when Sullivan went away to prison.

When he was 17, Price was arrested and charged with murder. The Bexar County District Attorney’s Office dismissed the charge, but authorities arrested him a few more times for other alleged crimes before his death.

For Sullivan, now 43, those gang ties don’t hold the same allure. Released to mandatory supervision after four years in prison, he eventually started a career as a barber and now operates a shop in the 700 block of New Braunfels called Hair Eccentric.

Sullivan says he and other “old timers,” former enemies from rival gangs, are now more likely to let those old grudges go. That changes with age, “certain experiences, certain losses,” he said.

But the crime cycle continues to ensnare.

Drug-dealing becomes a lucrative business in neighborhoods with historically limited opportunity and seemingly few avenues to tap into the mainstream economy. That drives young people toward an underground economy to earn money, said Mayor Taylor.

“They operate based on rules that they create to keep that structure going,” Taylor said. “Unfortunately, part of that whole scenario is violent crime.”

And that violence can have spillover effects, touching even the mayor personally. Taylor’s husband operated a bail bonds business in the same small retail building as Sullivan’s barber shop. Two people outside the building were hit in what police said was a gang-related, drive-by shooting in November 2014. Rodney Taylor, who was inside his business at the time, declined to cooperate or file charges against Jacquay Howard, who had been identified by a witness as the shooter. The interim police chief at the time said the mayor’s husband chose not to pursue a criminal mischief case, believing it was “out of concern for his (Taylor’s) family.”

Rodney Taylor had also previously declined to press charges in a 2010 burglary at a rental property he owned and in 2007 when a bullet struck one of his SUV tires while he was driving. Spokespeople for the mayor said her husband was not at the property when the burglary occurred, and he could not identify the driver in the drive-by, and so, they said, there was no way to press charges in either case.

Two months after the shooting outside Taylor’s and Sullivan’s businesses, Howard fired an AK-47 into a crowd of people at a car wash, killing two people, including Price, Sullivan’s son.

Sullivan has tried to get away from his past troubles. Though he works on the East Side, he’s since moved to Northeast Bexar County. When he’s in his old neighborhood, he watches his back.

“I felt unsafe in this neighborhood 20 years ago,” Sullivan said. “Nothing changes. You don’t know how easy it is to walk around this corner and get shot.”

In October, someone stabbed Sullivan in the chest as he walked out of the Smart Stop convenience store across the street from the car wash where his son was killed.

He didn’t bother calling police.

Chapter 3 - ‘A trip wire’

Endemic problems on the East Side have often been dealt with in a few ways: troubled kids were suspended or expelled, potentially putting them on a path to prison. If arrested and put on probation, they struggled to finish the terms successfully.

That aggressive arrest approach “wasn’t necessarily addressing the root causes of the issue,” said Adrian Lopez, SAHA’s director of community development initiatives.

So SAHA used some of the money from the Byrne grant to address probationers’ needs, an initiative called the Resurgence Collaborative. SAHA officials, the county’s adult probation office and new staff hired as part of the grant created a space at the Barbara Jordan Center where those offenders living on the East Side could more easily visit their probation officers.

For years, probationers could only see their officers at the main office west of downtown. People grew frustrated with the long waits and the limited time they had for appointments, and commuting was difficult for those lacking reliable transportation.

“What probation ends up being is a trip wire to send people to jail or prison,” said Nazgol Ghandnoosh, a research analyst with the Sentencing Project, an organization that promotes reforms in the criminal justice system.

The revocation rate in the 78202 and 78203 zip codes on the East Side, which include the Byrne grant area, was almost 41 percent in fiscal year 2014, according to a Trinity University analysis, more than double the rate for Bexar County.

“Unfortunately those two (East Side) zip codes are plagued with so many other social ills, of unemployment, drug use, prostitution, and it just so happens some of our defendants or clients live in that area,” said Bexar County Adult Probation Chief Jarvis Anderson. “They can’t afford to move anywhere else.”

Rafaele Dante Keys found himself caught in this trap.

Keys, 29, graduated from Lee High School in San Antonio and returned to his home state of Mississippi for college. He studied art and worked part time at a nursing home. But school became too much for him. He dropped out, started getting in trouble and joined a gang for protection. Then his mother decided to move him back to San Antonio.

He returned, and was busted several times for drug possession.

Keys was riding his bicycle last June when he said he stopped at the Handy Stop convenience store on New Braunfels, about a block from Sullivan’s hair salon, to talk to friends, “known dope boys.”

His friends had drugs but Keys swears he did not. When police arrived, his friends ran. Keys stayed put and took the charge for drugs found at the store, pleading guilty. He served some time and was put on two years probation.

With the opening of the Resurgence Collaborative in May 2015, Keys only had to travel about a mile to see his probation officer.

“It’s good, it’s real convenient for me,” said Keys, who likes to draw and make music.

Those who can use the Resurgence Collaborative, which plans to remain open through at least May 2020, also can access more than a dozen other resource agencies that operate out of the center or offer services there, including the Rape Crisis Center and Family Violence Prevention Services. Resources include financial counseling, health services, adult literacy and nutrition classes and food stamp assistance.

Since the center opened, the revocation rate for probationers who visit the Resurgence Collaborative was 26 percent, the adult probation office said, just a few percentage points above the Bexar County rate.

However, that number is slightly misleading: a Trinity University report notes that the 26 percent revocation rate refers only to the probation population visiting the Resurgence Collaborative — not everyone on probation who lives in the 78202 and 78203 zip codes. Also, violent offenders do not report to the Resurgence Collaborative, whereas that population was included in the 2014 revocation data for those two zip codes.

Earlier this year, Keys was back in the Bexar County Jail, charged with evading arrest and for an outstanding municipal court warrant for drug possession. The county’s Community Supervision and Corrections Department plans to recommend he remain on probation and attend a cognitive behavioral program.

Chapter 4 - Getting to the root of the problem

If the Resurgence Collaborative was designed to directly address the needs of people tangled in the criminal justice system, another Byrne grant strategy aimed to physically alter the environment in which people live and work by sprucing up businesses, adding more security lighting, for example — a concept called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, or CPTED.

The strategy harkens back to the “broken window” theory, that if potential perpetrators see a dilapidated community and obvious criminal activity, they’ll assume no one will bother to stop them from doing the same.

North New Braunfels Avenue, as a heavily traveled thoroughfare and an area called “an open-air drug market” by District 2 Councilman Alan Warrick, provided a perfect place to experiment with the idea.

Byrne grant money paid for block parties and bar-b-cues. Murals were painted. The owners of the Handy Stop, a notorious spot at the corner of Nolan and New Braunfels where Keys was arrested, installed security cameras and fences around the property. They cleaned two vacant lots next door, which were later converted into the Gardopia community garden.

SAHA awarded Gardopia founder Stephen Lucke $5,000 in Byrne monies to start the garden, where volunteers have planted vegetables and flowers. Homeless people in the neighborhood now work there, as do area residents, each tending to one of 16 raised garden beds.

“Any day you go out there,” Lucke said, “you might see a community member who has positive intentions at the garden.”

One such person is James Barnett, a homeless man often seen in his baseball cap with a tall boy in hand and wisdom dispatched in a deep, gravelly voice. Some know him by his first name, but on the streets they are more likely to know call him School, as in Old School.

Barnett became the garden’s unofficial caretaker. He grew an affinity for the work, caring for the chickens, roosters and turkeys Lucke brought to the garden. He found endless amusement in the small, auburn-colored rooster called Junior, tougher than any other bird.

To an extent, the garden is a success. There’s buy-in from people like Barnett. The garden has hosted Halloween fairs and other activities. A former drug dealer, quoted in a crime assessment of the area, said the garden represented the planting of “something that is growing instead of killing.”

Yet problems continue.

At least two shootings occurred at Nolan and New Braunfels by the Handy Stop last year, one fatal. Garden visitors complained police harassed the homeless people who worked there. The staff eventually started closing the garden during the week, when the site was unsupervised, “since several drug dealers were taking advantage of the space to stash their narcotics,” the crime assessment said.

Then, in early October, the Handy Stop shut down after the city threatened its owners with a lawsuit related to ongoing criminal activity at the store. A chain-link fence now surrounds the property.

People expressed relief at the store’s closure. But it also meant one less business on a corridor that still desperately needs that kind of investment. Barnett used to spend time in the garden because he could easily slip over to the Handy Stop for a beer. When it closed, he started spending more of his free time at other convenience stores on the corridor.

Norma Witherspoon, a longtime community member who owns a rarely-open thrift store on New Braunfels, believes SAHA took the wrong approach. People might come out for free food at the community events, but what about after that? She likes public art, but a mural on the side of the Handy Stop can’t stop a bullet.

She worries more about how to bring back those who’ve moved out of the neighborhood, many to Northeast San Antonio and Bexar County, people who aren’t convinced that things have changed for the better on the East Side.

To Witherspoon, the current federal initiatives to change the neighborhood are just more of a string of broken promises.

“You cannot repair a community in three years,” she said. “You can’t use a broken window theory when you have a broken foundation.”

Chapter 5 - Patrolling the problem

The killings took place in quick succession — nine people last February, and then a handful of others in early March, all on the East Side. The homicides — slayings stemming from a conflict that may have started over a Facebook post — foretold the violent year ahead.

That early wave of bloodshed prompted Byrne grant coordinators to pursue another strategy last summer — more patrol officers on the streets.

Rather than focus on more police cars cruising the neighborhood, the grant coordinators put $50,000 toward a community policing strategy that would fund overtime so that officers could walk the blocks and get to know residents. It’s the sort of thing they should be able to do every day, but there’s often little time for it.

“When you prioritize calls and workloads, the community engagement gets thrown out the window because you’ve got to take care of the bare bones stuff,” said Sgt. Dean Reuter, who oversees the SAPD East Side sub-station’s San Antonio Fear Free Environment, or SAFFE, unit, a group of officers who work as community liaisons.

One day late last summer, SAFFE Officers David Nouhan, Michael Trainor and Peter Ovalle walked into the Walters Food Mart across from the new East Meadows apartments, still then under construction.

Two little boys in blue polo shirts and khaki pants walked inside.

“How you doing boys?” Trainor called out to them as Ovalle pulled out a roll of stickers shaped like police badges and peeled off two.

A few minutes later, another little boy poked his head into the store.

“They say the police being nosy,” he shouted, to no one in particular.

“Who said that?” answered Officer Trainor.

“My sister,” the boy replied.

These are common occurrences. The officers tried to make nice and hand stickers to the boy and his sister.

“You tell me at four years old, where does that come from?” Trainor said, after the children had left. “It’s learned behavior.”

A 2015 Trinity University survey of people living in the Byrne grant area found that the majority of respondents agreed that police relations in the neighborhood were either bad or terrible.

“It’s a matter of making sure they (residents) can trust us,” said Sgt. Reuter, cautioning none of this is a quick fix. “And we understand people don’t always trust us. And we need to build that relationship.”

Still, the foot patrol program, which will continue through early spring, until the grant money runs out, has had its limitations.

An agreement between SAHA and the city said most of the police patrols — about 75 percent — were supposed to take place at night, according to records obtained by the Express-News. A project document that SAHA submitted to the federal Bureau of Justice Assistance also indicates the original plan was for patrols to happen between 7 p.m. and midnight, at least four days a week.

But most of the patrols took place during daylight. The pool of officers Reuter had available to work also shrank, from 25 in June to between eight and 10 by year’s end. Many of them work during the day, so it’s easier to continue in overtime after their shifts end, rather than return several hours later. Also, there are more lucrative overtime opportunities elsewhere.

The strategy of the patrols also changed. Originally, officers were instructed to drive to a hot spot and walk up and down the streets.

But then a sniper killed five police officers in Dallas, weeks after the San Antonio foot patrols began. After that, some of the San Antonio officers felt exposed and uneasy walking around in the open, Reuter said. Rather than walk whole blocks, officers would instead drive to a location and go inside that particular business or walk the four corners of the intersection.

Interactions with citizens can also be tricky matters.

In late September, Trainor and another SAFFE patrolman, Officer Mike Casiano, were doing their foot patrol rounds. They pulled up to the Walters Food Mart and saw an elderly man, a young man and a little boy talking under the shade of a pecan tree next to the convenience store parking lot and across the street from the East Meadows construction.

“Who are these guys?” Casiano said to Trainor. “Do they got a kid with them? Never seen these guys before.”

Casiano told them they had to leave. Trainor handed the boy a police badge sticker and high-fived him. His 20-year-old uncle was frustrated, not clear why they had to leave.

Another officer who happened to be stopping by the convenience store pulled up, followed by two more. Soon, there were five or six uniformed officers to the two men and five-year-old boy under the tree.

After the trio dispersed, Casiano explained this was a known spot where dealers hid their drugs. Officers started aggressively targeting the store and surrounding area after the foot patrols began.

To Mayor Taylor, this episode reflects “how difficult it is to walk the line when you have an area where there’s been some high crime and you try to bring to bear additional resources but you don’t want people to feel that they’re being over-policed, that they’re being harassed or treated differently.”

Though things might have transpired differently, Taylor said, if the officers had known the men hanging out under the tree.

“If there was an established relationship,” Taylor said, “I think you would have potentially a different outcome.”

Chapter 6 - A first step

In early October, hundreds gathered on the East Side to celebrate the grand opening of East Meadows.

A few blocks away, far from the speeches and promises of change, Sullivan worked in his barber shop with his business partner and former girlfriend, LaQueena Gonzales. They knew little about East Meadows, but Gonzales was eager to see the new apartments.

A mother of three, Gonzales dreams of a nice neighborhood with more parking, pretty trees, a police officer on every corner. No more vacant buildings or rusted street lights. She wants a day care on New Braunfels and a Subway or Starbucks in place of the Handy Stop convenience store. Simple, basic things.

Both she and Sullivan live in Converse, and many of their customers come from the Northeast Side. Often, those clients are jarred by what they see: homeless people on the street or a bullet hole in the shop window that the landlord has yet to fix.

“I’ve lost a couple of clients for that reason alone,” Gonzales said.

Crime is a big part of the upcoming mayoral race — Taylor’s main challengers are District 8 Councilman Ron Nirenberg and Bexar County Democratic Party Chairman Manuel Medina, both of whom have raised the issue. The topic also came up repeatedly in a recent debate among the three candidates vying to unseat Warrick in City Council District 2.

Currently, no city funds are earmarked for additional police foot patrols, but Police Chief William McManus said the department “will come up with something to substitute or replace that.” Money for Stand Up S.A. — which was funded by other city resources, not the Byrne grant — is set to expire at the end of this month, but the city is evaluating the initiative and looking at some way to extend the program.

In response to continued crime and other issues, the city has launched another violence prevention program, this time funding a $111,000 Group Violence Intervention pilot program that will be housed out of the Barbara Jordan Center and overseen by San Antonio Fighting Back. William Miles, the Byrne grant assistant coordinator, is now project coordinator for this new program, which targets those at risk of being involved with violence, either as a perpetrator or victim.

Even as the various East Side grants conclude, the neighborhood will remain visible.

All phases of East Meadows will be complete by 2019. New residents, meanwhile, continue to flock to Dignowity Hill, an East Side neighborhood west of New Braunfels that’s begun to draw professionals, millennials and investors looking for historic housing near downtown. Other nearby East Side neighborhoods, like Denver Heights, are also beginning to draw commercial and residential interest.

Taylor remains convinced that economic development and workforce training, and not necessarily policing alone, will deter crime by creating opportunities for mobility. The neighborhood will look great once many of these initiatives are completed, “but if people don’t feel there’s a change in their bank account,” she said, “they will say nothing has happened.”

McManus said the city needs to continue to work to erase stigmas about the East Side, so even more entrepreneurs will want to work there.

“What’s happening in parts of the East Side is generational,” said he said. “And that just doesn’t disappear overnight.”

Handy Stop calls

Calls for police service to Handy Stop at 627 N. New Braunfels Ave. from Jan. 1, 2012 through Aug. 3, 2016.

New Braunfels Avenue, between Burleson and Houston streets, is slated to receive $9 million for street improvements and new sidewalks as part of the bond package voters will consider in May. That includes the stretch of New Braunfels that passes the community garden, the Handy Stop and the Hayes Food Mart.

The Handy Stop is expected to reopen this spring with a new manager. Lucke, owner of Gardopia, said he hopes to sell salads and juices, made with produce from the garden, inside the new store. He is also negotiating to buy the land on which the community garden now sits.

However, the problems that once plagued the old Handy Stop — drug use and drug sales, visible drinking and loitering — have now moved north, to the Hayes Food Mart, and south, closer to the Smart Stop convenience store. In response, the police department started to redirect its foot patrols to those areas.

Similarly, volunteers with the new gang violence intervention program gathered in recent months to clean a cluster of vacant lots on Center Street, near the Smart Stop, that had become a homeless encampment.

“This place a couple months ago was a mess,” said Sgt. Reuter. People turned tricks and did dope, he said, moving back and forth between there, the Smart Stop and the car wash across New Braunfels — the same one where Sullivan’s son was murdered in January 2015.

Center Street is also where Christopher Dotson was fatally shot last June. Dotson, a 34-year-old father of two and Sullivan’s cousin, was killed across from the lots the volunteers were clearing.

By chance, Dotson’s brother, Floyd Wolford, drove by as volunteers were finishing. He was on his way to work but stopped when he recognized one of the volunteers. As they talked, Wolford started crying. Six months had passed without any arrests since his brother’s death.

The volunteer called over a pastor helping at the cleanup. Then she and the pastor prayed over Wolford as he sat in his vehicle and wept.

A month later, police arrested a man in Dotson’s killing, a member of the street gang “Rigsby Court Bloods,” according to an arrest affidavit. Investigators believe the shooting involved drugs.

Days later, a man was killed in the Smart Stop parking lot — one more homicide in the four-corner radius off New Braunfels where both Dotson and Sullivan’s son were killed.

Four months after mourners marched down North New Braunfels, demanding an end to the violence and justice for Destiny Garcia, the woman’s case remains unsolved.

The small memorial constructed in her honor still stands on Hays Street, around the corner from the food mart. “Miss you,” reads one note written in black marker on a faded piece of cardboard surrounded by melted votive candles.

Two months after she was killed, a 44-year-old man was slain on the same block, found shot multiple times in his face and neck.

Soon after, another memorial was added, a single cross planted in the changing landscape.

vdavila@express-news.net

Partnership with DEA meant some grant money was spent on undercover drug buys

Arrangement was intended to take down drug traffickers on the East Side.

To tackle rampant drug dealing and violence on the East Side, particularly along the North New Braunfels Avenue corridor, the San Antonio Housing Authority teamed up with the Drug Enforcement Administration.

SAHA took $100,000 of a $600,000 federal grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance and gave it to the DEA for what became known as Operation Cookie Monster — with “cookie” describing what the drug crack looks like after it’s cooked.

The partnership was unusual because a Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation grant isn’t typically used to pursue drug traffickers.

The original goal of the arrangement was two-fold: The DEA would spend most of the cash on undercover drug buys, and ideally, arrest some of the most egregious mid- and high-level traffickers operating in certain parts of the East Side.

SAHA would get intelligence about residents involved in drug activity and provide the DEA with information on SAHA clients who were purportedly involved in drug trafficking “based on continued complaints by concerned citizens,” according to an agreement between the agencies. That included people who have Section 8 vouchers from SAHA or live in SAHA properties.

In the end, SAHA never sent any information about residents, and the DEA never asked for it, said SAHA spokeswoman Rosario Neaves.

SAHA requires all residents to sign leases that prohibit them from engaging in any criminal activity. Housing authority employees are supposed to report suspected criminal activity to the appropriate authorities, Neaves said.

In addition, SAHA would also get a slice of the proceeds from the sale of any confiscated weapons and properties. The idea was that SAHA could rehabilitate those properties, “which could have the potential for long term impact in the target area,” the Bureau of Justice of Assistance wrote in an email.

“Our plan is to seize as many properties as we can,” wrote then DEA assistant special agent in charge Meliton Rodriguez, in an Aug. 26, 2014, email to SAHA obtained by the Express-News through a public records request. “This will allow for you all to spend less monies if you had planned to purchase the properties.”

But St. Mary’s School of Law professor Gerald Reamey found the arrangement troubling.

“It’s like renting the DEA,” Reamey said. “‘I’m going to pay you money to come and investigate areas that are of interest to me.’”

The initial operation in 2015 resulted in the arrests of 18 people on federal drug and weapon charges and three people on state charges, the seizure of 18 firearms, more than $480,000 and more than 21 kilograms of cocaine, more than one kilogram of crack cocaine and smaller amounts of methamphetamine and marijuana, according to the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

A second DEA investigation started in 2016 after a wave of violence early that year that included 13 slayings on the East Side in about six weeks. That investigation coincided with the DEA partnering with several law enforcement agencies, including SAPD, to fight crime there.

It resulted in the arrest of another 12 people on federal drug and weapons charges and eight people for state violations. Eighteen firearms were seized in addition to cocaine, methamphetamine, small amounts of crack cocaine, heroin and marijuana and $141,000.

“It was the only time in my career that I’ve ever seen where we started a street level investigation and it led to cartel members in Mexico,” said Rodriguez, who oversaw the initial investigation but left before the second. “That was what was so unique about this case.”

Dante Sorianello, who took over from Rodriguez as assistant special agent in charge in San Antonio, called task force results significant.

“Overt criminal activity went more underground,” he said.

The operation worked particularly well for the DEA, Rodriguez said, because the grant allowed agents to make buys whenever they needed to rather than having to go through headquarters. The DEA had to provide reports to SAHA to account for how the money was spent.

The fact that the DEA could have done this kind of investigation on its own makes the partnership that much worse, Reamey said.

“It reinforces my view that SAHA is wasting government grant money,” Reamey said. “SAHA is entering into an agreement that doesn’t provide much benefit to SAHA. It does provide a substantial benefit to the DEA.”

So far, SAHA has received $14,616 from the DEA operations, according to the Bureau of Justice Assistance. The money paid for a Byrne grant promotional video that highlights SAHA’s efforts and for Halloween and Christmas community fairs on New Braunfels Avenue, and future community beautification projects.

No properties were turned over to SAHA from the DEA investigations.

Asked about the proceeds SAHA received, housing authority President and CEO David Nisivoccia said he was not “at liberty to talk about that.”

In the end, the SAHA arrangement with the DEA was discontinued. The DEA had to give $25,000 back to the housing authority after the federal Bureau of Justice Assistance determined that the money wasn’t being spent in a way that fit with the purpose of the Byrne program.

It has not yet been determined how the $25,000 will be spent, but the money will be used for community events and other Byrne grant initiatives, including a community garden along New Braunfels Avenue and a pilot, violence-prevention program, Neaves said.